Why Teens Don't Tweet: A Teen's Perspective.
Research company Nielsen recently published a report showing data as to which age groups are driving Twitter's growth. Following 15 year old Morgan Stanley intern Matthew Robson's report on teenage media consumption, Nielsen's research confirms a statement made by Robson that generally "teenagers do not use Twitter." Nielsen's research shows that only 16 percent of Twitter website users are under the age of 25. Related to data showing that under 25's make up one quater of internet usage in the United States, this figure is surprisingly low. In Nielsen's words this means "Twitter.com effectively under-indexes on the youth market by 36 percent." Bear in mind that this data is related to under 25's, so usage by solely teenagers is less. The question has been raised online countless times: why aren't teenagers using Twitter?
In New Zealand, social networking sites Facebook and Bebo are most popular amongst teenagers. This is due to teenagers requiring a different form of social networking than the majority of adults. Whereas adults may strive to build an online presence, for work-related reasons or purely for enjoyment, teenagers require a service that allows them to communicate to people in their lives. Facebook and Bebo are based upon communicating to a closed network of friends - connections are made through approval-only. In most cases, users wish to only communicate to and from people they know. Twitter is different - it is set up to allow you to share with anyone who wants to listen, and for you to listen to anyone that is willing to share.
This difference in interests partially answers the question as to why teenagers do not use Twitter. Twitter simply does not offer what the majority of teenagers require. The exception to this is that Twitter offers a platform great for gaining live information from people related to your interests. For example, many teenagers use Twitter to "follow" celebrities - receiving any information that they share.
Twitter is also based upon its "live-search" feature. Live-search enables you to see in real-time what users of Twitter all over the world are saying. For example, Twitter's live-search feature has been used by millions over the world to learn about the Iranian Elections. More recently, a Twitter user witnessed a plane and a helecopter collide over New York's Hudson River. He "tweeted" about what was happenning as it happened, allowing millions over the world to learn in real-time of the event. While this feature is being praised by adults, and is the reason many join Twitter, it fails to capture teenagers. Teenagers use Google for search, for the reason that it offers results based upon relevance, rather than Twitter's sorting of most recent to least recent.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati